Future directions for digital literacy development of Indian educators

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Date

2010-11

Abstract

The development and diffusion of digital technologies are bringing in significant changes in literacy practices (Warschauer, 2009). The changes are occurring in the way we access, understand, and use information in reading, writing and interacting in our social and professional lives. Teachers these days increasingly face the challenges to make their learners creative and competent users of digital technologies that characterise our lives. They are being trained to use computer and internet as part of their in-service training. They are also being encouraged to take part in seminars and conferences and organise them at their institution. The focus of most of these events is using technologies in language teaching. Hands on sessions are being preferred to presentations. There has been a spurt in the use of social networking sites in India recently. According to one study, 56% of Indian net users do social and professional networking on the web (Mahajan, 2009). It is believed that interactions on those sites helping Indian users to improve their digital literacy and communication skills. No study is available to indicate how the Indian teachers are using them in their social and professional lives. It is believed that such an understanding could be an important step towards a largescale project for integrating web 2.0 tools in Indian classroom teaching. This study can be seen as one such foundational study. It is exploratory in nature, so it intends to raise questions rather answering them.

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